Campaign Obama vs. President Obama

David Corn is the latest liberal to suggest that there's no problem with the Obama administration that "message discipline" can't fix. Jim Geraghty correctly identifies that as nonsense.

This past year has also seen a lot of controversial and unpopular policies and ideas that this president didn’t campaign on, because campaigning on them would have meant he would have gotten shellacked.

Ideas like giving Khalid Sheik Mohammad a civilian trial in New York City. Ideas like lowering the tax deduction for charitable contributions. Ensuring that bonuses for AIG employees are federally protected. An unlimited bailout for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Having the federal government take over GM. Bowing to foreign monarchs. Unannounced low-altitude flybys of lower Manhattan for a photo op. Ideas like loudly announcing that you’ll close Guantanamo Bay within one year, and then later announcing that you won’t make the deadline because it turns out there aren’t good alternatives.

Obama didn’t campaign on any of this, and if he had, he probably would have lost by a landslide.

Message? Message? The problem is not the message. The problem is the decisions of the messenger.

Exactly right. Obama's a radical leftist who ran as a moderate in an essentially conservative country. There's no amount of "message discipline" that can reconcile the reality of Obama with the illusion projected (and enhanced by the media) during the campaign.